Theconsciouspoet wrote:I attended last nights concert at TPAC in Nashville. Oddly enough I have been holding out my entire life and have never been to a concert. Naturally there's always a story behind why but that's not important. I had always told myself that I'd see Leonard Cohen if I had the chance and so I waited just for that moment. I spared no expense which ultimately meant I had to go alone. Having paid twice the price as many for my front B13 seat but the truth is I would have paid much more for the opportunity. After it was over I realized that no price tag can measure the experience. There's so much in life but nothing has quite fullfilled enough to satisfy my void until last night. For one brief moment I knew.

Cohen’s body of work is well documented and well loved. His voice is a low and husky rumble, the kind of thing that wouldn’t last a minute on American Idol and that helps the singer draw laughs each night when he sings, “I had no choice/ I was born with the gift of a golden voice.”

He was not born with a golden voice. But Cohen has developed more significant gifts: those of presence, attention and graciousness.

The presence part was apparent from the outset. Cohen’s first major American tour in 15 years comes in part because he could use some cash after a former manager took off with millions of dollars of earnings. Yet this was anything but a grudging performance.

Dressed in a black suit and a shining, impossible belt buckle, Cohen was wholly in the moment, talking of how he lived near Nashville for years, on a 1,500 acre farm rented from Country Music Hall of Famer Boudleaux Bryant for $75 a month.

The attention and graciousness aspects seemed to work together, as is often the case. In a distracted, tweet–away world, Cohen tends to look folks in the eye. During most every song, someone in his nine-piece band would take a solo, and Cohen would respond by taking off his fedora — he used the hat as a prop, like Bob Wills used his oft-pointing fiddle bow, or like Humphrey Bogart used his cigarette — and concentrating intently at the soloist.

The message was clear: “I, Leonard Cohen, am now a member of the audience. When I put the hat back on, perhaps I shall sing and you may turn your attention back to me. In the meantime, listen to something extraordinary.”

The result was that band members were heard and appreciated at a level seldom experienced. In the second set, when Cohen introduced each member for the second time, the audience stood and cheered for several minutes. A standing ovation... for the band.

A published poet for more than 50 years, and recording artist for more than 40, Cohen is a 75-year-old with what must be 25-year-old knees. He often dropped to those knees — particularly in the first set, when he wasn’t holding an acoustic guitar — and sang as if pleading to a lover, a higher power, or both.

He began, as is the usual of late, with “Dance Me To The End of Love,” and went on to perform “Suzanne,” “The Future,” “Bird On the Wire” (which was admired, and sung, by Johnny Cash) “Hallelujah,” “I’m Your Man,” "Sisters of Mercy,” “Chelsea Hotel, No. 2” and other favorites.

A bevy of Nashville musical luminaries — including Rodney Crowell, Beth Nielsen Chapman, Gary Paczosa, Sergio Webb, Marshall Chapman, Trent Summar and Wood Newton — were in attendance to bear witness to Cohen’s lyrical testimony. At one point, Cohen told the story behind “Chelsea Hotel,” a song written about Janis Joplin.

“We were on the elevator... I asked her, ‘Are you looking for someone?’” he recalled. “She said, ‘I’m looking for Kris Kristofferson.’ ‘You’re in luck. I am Kris Kristofferson.’”

Cohen told the audience that Joplin replied, “I thought you were taller.” He got a laugh out of that one.

Neither Cohen nor Kristofferson is tall, though their legacies can dunk a basketball without so much as standing on tiptoes. And then Cohen sang the song, for an audience that, following Cohen’s lead, was present, attentive and gracious.

Thanks for posting the video of The Darkness - it's interesting to see how it has evolved since its premiere at the Venice soundcheck; there are quite a few lyric changes and additions and the organ is much more prominent. The style of the vocal is also much changed - however I am inclined to think that the way in which it was sung in Venice was preferable, it just seemed to suit the song more.

I was at the concert in Nashville last night (along with Arlene and Dick Straub and Ken and Cara (MusicCityGypsy) and everyone - big 'Thank You" to Cara for organizing our meet-up on Wednesday night.) It was a truly great show - I think Arlene's report sums it up very well.

A few of us went to Hatch Show Prints early this morning and were able to get posters. There were only 12 available and we were only allowed to buy one each, unfortunately. Similar posters were at the Durham show, but with a different lyric from 'Hallelujah' at the top. Keep your eyes out for them at upcoming shows - the rumor is they are printing more, with different 'Hallelujah' lyrics for each venue, for upcoming shows. The Hatch staff would neither confirm or deny! I thought you would like to see what they look like:

When Leonard Cohen took the stage at TPAC's Jackson Hall last night, he and his band probably could have soaked up the rapturous applause for half an hour, but they went right to work, opening with a breezy rendition of "Dance Me to the End of Love." Sitting in our snug theater seats (an unusual comfort for us), we needed about three songs before we got our heads around the fact that yes, we were actually here. In the same room with Leonard Cohen. (Leonard Cohen!) And he was onstage singing these songs to us.

Once the initial buzz wore off (and before our malty one took hold), we realized that one of the great songwriters of all time was up there surrounded by a really slick Adult Contemporary band. Have we ever thought that "Bird on the Wire" might be improved by making it sound more like "Wonderful Tonight"? Why, no, we haven't. If it was anybody else singing any other set of songs to an accompaniment this smooth, we might have nodded off or walked out somewhere around the hour mark--the words "Kenny" and "G" had bubbled up in our thoughts, and trust us, that does not feel good. But this was Leonard Cohen, and if there is something more sublime than hearing his voice fill a room with poetry, it is not for sale on this earth (that we know of). Stylish, energetic and sharp, he had us by the vertebrae the entire night.

While we were hoping for some of the grittier songs--"Is This What You Wanted," "The Butcher," etc.--that isn't really where Cohen's heart is these days, and we're fine with that. He paused at one point to thank us for sharing this evening with him and to remind us how lucky we all were just to be able to see a show like this, "with so much of the world plunged in chaos." Lucky doesn't even begin to cover it. And he was funny, too! He introduced "Chelsea Hotel No. 2" by telling a story of riding the elevator and asking a woman (presumably Janis Joplin, the song's subject) if she was looking for someone. "Kris Kristofferson," she answered. "You're in luck," he says he replied. A wonderfully chilling "Everybody Knows" and "Who by Fire"--complete with mesmerizing solo Spanish guitar intro--were highlights among highlights from the first set. During the intermission, we grabbed some beer in the lobby, where everyone from film auteurs (Harmony Korine) to political big-wigs (Chip Forrester) was milling about and waiting for the miracle to resume.

We returned to our seats to find Cohen standing in front of a keyboard. "Don't worry," he assured us, "This thing goes by itself. You've probably never seen anything like it." He got the second set going with the thoroughly awesome "Tower of Song," which got a loud hoot for mentioning Hank Williams (the Chablis had evidently started to take effect in the expensive seats) and for Cohen's solo, easily the least slick run of notes played all night. Following were the timeless "Suzanne" and "Sisters of Mercy," both transcendent. He played a new song, a haunting, bluesy number we're pretty sure is called "The Darkness," which segued into a moving rendition of "The Partisan" and on into the inevitable, majestic "Hallelujah," which brought out a few battery-operated candles and the like.

In addition to belting forcefully on "So Long, Marianne," Cohen bounded back onto the stage for each of the encores, displaying more energy than we can dream of having at age 75 (if we make it that long). He changed up a few lyrics here and there--replacing "anal sex" with "careless sex" in "The Future," for example--and played with the melodies a bit, but mostly he just reinforced how indelible these songs are. Even when a gaudy saxophone solo interrupted the dreary beauty of "Famous Blue Raincoat"--the concert equivalent of watching Casablanca and hearing Bogey say, "Play it again, Jar Jar"--Cohen drew us all right back into the song the second he began incanting another verse into his microphone. "Here's a man," he sang near show's end, "still working for your smile." Aw, Lenny--you had us at "I tried to leave you."

Caveat lector, what follows is a long and self-indulgent personal account.

When I was in college, I read this passage from a book. These words have been with me ever since, and they have had a great influence on me:

“Here, Socrates, lie down alongside me, so that by my touching you, I too may enjoy the piece of wisdom that just occurred to you while you were on the porch. It is plain that you found it and have it, for otherwise you would not have come away beforehand.”

And Socrates sat down and said, “It would be a good thing, Agathon, if wisdom were the sort of thing that flows from the fuller of us into the emptier, just by our touching one another, as the water in wine cups flows through a wool thread from the fuller to the emptier. For if wisdom too is like that, then I set a high price on my being placed alongside you, for I believe I shall be filled from you with much fair wisdom. My own may turn out to be a very sorry sort of wisdom, or disreputable like a dream; but your own is brilliant and capable of much development, since it has flashed out so intensely from you while you are young; and yesterday it became conspicuous among more than thirty thousand Greek witnesses”(Symposium 175c8-e6).

Because we pretty much know that wisdom does not flow, like wine, through a wool thread, Socrates’ quip with Agathon strikes a cautionary note. I may believe that it is worth a great deal of money to set myself down in a seat close by to someone I admire, and this might be because I believe that I will acquire something through the proximity. But I am foolish.

And at face value, I was foolish last night. I paid a great deal of money to set myself down in a seat close by to someone I admire, Leonard Cohen. Anyone who knows me, and not many people do I guess, knows that the musical recordings of Leonard Cohen have had a formative effect on my growth as a human being, since about my senior year of college (2002-2003) when I first heard “Bird on a Wire.” I first got my hands on The Essential Leonard Cohen in the late fall. I stayed in Annapolis over the Christmas holiday that year, mostly by myself, working as a waitress at the restaurant downstairs from my apartment, drinking cranberry vodka sodas or champagne after work (boss-man was pretty lax with the Belvedere vodka or Moët & Chandon), and stumbling upstairs after the night was finished to open my bedside window seat, which overlooked the main street of historic downtown, to wrap myself in an old wool sweater, put my face out against the cold, sip some secreted champagne, smoke a du Maurier, listen to Ten New Songs on repeat, watch the empty street, and catch the occasional snowflake on my tear-stained cheek. If I close my eyes, I can still feel the dark and silent snow, taste the stale champagne, that New Year, after midnight in Annapolis.

The feeling of loneliness and profundity was incomparable. I had so many thoughts in those days, I remember they used to come out in floods of inspired writing, fueled by these late-night, feverish, tear-soaked revelations (sometimes tears of desperate sorrow, sometimes tears of desperate joy). I was writing my senior paper on the Symposium, a dialogue about eros. It was all about this unattainable thing that would come so close, and even lay down beside you, and even tempt you with these words, and this drove you into a frenzy of desire, for that unattainable thing.. I, like many young people who study the Symposium, felt great sympathy with Alcibiades. I also had a bad habit, a scary and abusive habit, of falling deeply in love. To the tunes of “Take this Waltz” and “Dance Me to the End of Love.” I am so very, very sorry.

(Ah, youth, etc., etc., And now I’ve got to deal with the fact that I’ve drug up all these feelings again, as if there’s some kind of unfinished business there, which there isn’t, I emphatically tell myself, I have made it so that all of that business is finished.)

Up until the moment when Leonard Cohen came out on stage, it was hardly real to me! In anticipation I tried to trivialize it to myself, by playfully saying to Andy how we were going downtown to see just “some music group or other,” “some regular old singer that would probably be ok,” and this really wasn’t hard to believe. How could I possibly go see something, a body, how could a single body, contain in itself everything that Leonard Cohen has come to mean to me?

I suffer from no illusions about this at least, I know that I am not friends with Leonard Cohen. I am sure he is a very nice man. But my admiration has been from a distance, and it hasn’t even really been of him, rather I have admired his music and words. We (his music and words and me) have shared something very special and important, but that something is not him. I know nothing of the man himself and I’ve done an ok job of keeping it that way (no thanks to DrHGuy).

Because, you see, I have intimacy issues with my idols. I resist the desire, I have a phobia, for closeness. And I believe I have very good, serious reasons for my reluctance: it is a bad habit, a scary and abusive habit, to let people, earthly and arbitrary people, with frail intentions and trembling hands, get a hold of your soul. The love that steers my life may be so strong that no obstacle can turn it away from its pursuit, but that love is at least mine. I know it is mine because it is of me, It answers to me and I answer to It, we have had a lot of conversations over the years, and however trying it is, we’ve always been able to reach an agreement. It may have required pain and sacrifice on both our parts, but our overall wellbeing relies on our conjoining ourselves together, our harmonia, our agreement that these pains have been worthwhile. I am—what I am is—the possibility of reconciliation (an Aristotelian psychoanalytic: the dynamis of harmonia as dynamis?). And thus, I am no slave to eros—because, my eros is no slave. (See what I did there? I’ve had only the best of teachers.)

Anyway—as I write I am sitting here wearing my new Beautiful Losers t-shirt, which I wore to bed last night—I wanted to have very little interest in seeing or being near to the body of Leonard Cohen. My girlish fingers, clicky credit-card keyboard fingers, got the good seats, but I myself, I would be calm as an adult. Or at least I would pretend to be. And I almost did it! And now I want to write down words so that I’ll really remember the memory of last night, like I can remember the memory of the dark and silent snow.

I remember the shadow of the brim of his hat, the shadow cast by the spotlight, how sometimes it would cover his eyes, and sometimes it wouldn’t, and sometimes (in more prayerly moments) he would even look up to the light, as if speaking to Heaven. He was so small, and also kind, to the other musicians and to the audience, and yes, the lines were well-worn with rehearsal from other venues, but I believe they were honest. During the Webb sisters’ “If It Be Your Will,” I could see him off in the dark of the stage, looking quietly at them and listening, and I swear it was a private moment for everyone in the theater, a moment with Leonard, sharing with him our admiration for something beautiful. There was a story about how he lived right here near Nashville, just outside of Franklin, a place called East Fork (I think?), in a cabin, $75/month, rented from a friend, there was a neighbor, Leonard asked him “Do you have a horse for me?”, the man brought over a gray mare, Leonard never could catch it, there was so much land, he just brought it sugar cubes to eat, and then the horse would run away. His stage moves. The moments when he got on his knees to sing, or when he’d bend his legs and press his thin knees together, leaning slightly over the mic and gesturing with his hand, as if he was just then really remembering his own memories, remembering the woman who was looking for Kris Kristofferson when he sang “Chelsea Hotel”, or remembering wanting to cry looking through the papers when singing “In My Secret Life”. Maybe I am naive, but I think it makes it not a lie but something honest, that he was just then really remembering his own memories. Skipping on and off the stage like a child one tenth (!) his age. The man who sat to my right was alone, at intermission he said his wife gave him the ticket for his birthday, but she had no interest in coming, she didn’t like Leonard Cohen so much; all I could do was stare at him in shock, I hope I wasn’t rude, but his story was a bit sad and I was still high from “Anthem”. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t been there with Andy, I held his hand tightly most of the time, I felt I needed to, as if I was undergoing surgery. The music was warm and inviting and precise. The ruby cup of darkness blues song was still and dark and dangerous. I wanted to get up and dance, because lately I dance, when mid- to late-era songs came on, or “Boogie Street” (which is a particular favorite of ours), but I couldn’t because I wasn’t in my own kitchen, so I lived vicariously through Sharon Robinson. I love her and I trust her better than Leonard Cohen. I do wish I knew her, or was myself trusting enough to be friends with someone like her. The lights were important. They were so deep and colorful, except when he sang “Suzanne,” at which point they darkened to mostly black and a small whitely illuminated Leonard, as if it is a song whose feelings are felt in the dark. It wasn’t private, but it was shared. If I were a vocal type of audience member, I would have shouted, as the angels do in “Because of,” Look at me, Leonard!, but instead I just thought it to myself. Those are the kind of dialectics best kept silent. And then I told Andy after.

I wore new shoes last night, it’s a funny little irony, written in the sole of the shoes it says, unconsciously like Parmenides, “There is only the truth.” I remember the strange feel of my new shoes on the cold sidewalk, kind of negotiating their fresh relationship with my funny-shaped feet, as we walked back to the library parking lot. Downtown Nashville streets at night smell like second-hand smoke. Andy said it was like, and then it reminded us of, Philly. I don’t really know what else to say. It was special, but of course it was not singular. It was perfect, unassuming, gentle, respectful, and beautiful. I didn’t feel violated, I hardly even felt deceived. And now I am desperate to remember every last minute of it.

I was at the concert in Nashville last night (along with Arlene and Dick Straub and Ken and Cara (MusicCityGypsy) and everyone - big 'Thank You" to Cara for organizing our meet-up on Wednesday night.) It was a truly great show - I think Arlene's report sums it up very well.

A few of us went to Hatch Show Prints early this morning and were able to get posters. There were only 12 available and we were only allowed to buy one each, unfortunately. Similar posters were at the Durham show, but with a different lyric from 'Hallelujah' at the top. Keep your eyes out for them at upcoming shows - the rumor is they are printing more, with different 'Hallelujah' lyrics for each venue, for upcoming shows. The Hatch staff would neither confirm or deny! I thought you would like to see what they look like:

Lucky you, Christian. What a great treasure to have an LC poster by the historic Hatch Print Shop!
Thanks for posting a picture of it.